Ben Brooks

Budget thermal imaging on a NOYAFA NF-583

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 13:09:21 +0000

Update: 2026-02-26 - See update under Linux for the v4l2 proxy to get this thermal camera properly working in Linux!

I was on the market for a cheap(ish) thermal imaging camera as a way to DIY survey the thermal insulating properties of my current house, soon to be new house, and take spooky pictures of my dog.

FLIR are highly regarded and the most well known budget thermal imaging devices that plug in to phones. FLIR has lots of nice features, like “MSX”, which is essentially superimposing an edge detection filter from your standard phone camera on top of the lower resolution IR image. This allows you to see finer visible details of a thermal image without a costly increase in resolution for the IR camera.

Synology NAS Tips

Tue, 15 May 2018 00:09:10 +0000

I finally got around to replacing my ancient USB 2.0 HDD, with frayed power lead, hooked up to a Gen-1 Raspberry Pi that acted as a Media Server, NAS, and general false sense of security…

I ended up spending more than anticipated, and getting a Synology DS918+, loading it with four 4TB drives in a RAID 5 array, for a total storage capacity of 12TB with single disk redundancy, and 16GB of RAM for all those Docker containers/VMs I run.

Native Sonos Podcast support with Pocket Casts

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 17:02:10 +0000

It’s been a while since my last post regarding using PocketCasts to stream podcasts to Sonos… Well I’m here with some good news!

Sonos now has a beta version of Pocket Casts as a native audio-source! Go check it out by joining the Sonos beta and adding it as usual in the audio-sources menu.

This gives you benefits like resuming podcasts from where you were, regardless of which device you listened on originally, a nicer, more streamlined UI inside Sonos app, and of course not having to index your media :)

CoreOS on Kimsufi: Round 2

Thu, 25 Aug 2016 18:37:00 +0000

Warning! This guide is out of date/obsolete.

Since the original CoreOS on Kimsufi post, things have changed slightly. The good news is, there’s a much nicer way to get up and running now! With OVH’s new installation template, getting CoreOS running on a Kimsufi server is now even easier!

Even better is that it comes with etcd, fleet and all of CoreOS’ good stuff pre-configured and ready to go out of the box.

Sonos podcasts via Android and Pocket Casts

Mon, 18 Apr 2016 18:51:29 +0000

Warning! This guide is out of date. Please visit the newer version - Native Sonos Podcast support with Pocket Casts!

Sonos, sadly has never had a great reputation with podcasts. They just plain don’t work. The proposed workarounds, by using services such as Stitcher tend to fall short of available shows and usability.

If you’re an avid podcast consumer and use an Android device, chances are you use Pocket Casts by Shiftyjelly. Pocket Casts recently added a feature to stream straight to Chromecast from the app. Great. But sadly it does not play ball with Sonos (yet).

CoreOS/Docker setup on a Kimsufi dedicated server

Thu, 17 Sep 2015 20:10:23 +0000

Warning! This guide is out of date. Please visit the newer version!

I recently bought a new dedicated server from Kimsufi, which is much more powerful than my old one. Rather than just installing Ubuntu, Debian or Arch and setting up services, I thought I’d try and go down the Docker route with CoreOS. This turned out to be much easier than I anticipated! So here’s a quick rundown of how I got it working.

Attempting Cocoa development in RubyCocoa, Obj-C and Swift

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:06:16 +0000

I’ve been looking for a tiny little program for ages. It seems really simple, but I can’t for the life of me find one that does what I want!

I wanted a countdown utility in my OS X menubar. Always visible, always looming. I wanted it to panic me when working towards a deadline.

Timers existed, but nothing could count down towards an absolute date or time, just a relative time.

Current status: Busy, but looking for work!

Tue, 27 Jan 2015 21:00:43 +0000

I have a lot on my plate at the moment, a breif description of which is down below. However I am looking for part-time web-dev work to squeeze in and do remotely, in order to keep me fed and keep the lights on! If anbody has any leads or wishes to chat about projects, drop me a line at ben@bbrks.me.

First on my todo list that I’ve just embarked upon, is my final year project at Aberystwyth University. This dissertation is to produce and possibly implement a major piece of techincal work, and write a report to the tune of 15-20,000 words to go alongside it.

Wanderings in... Europe

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 17:03:00 +0000

I really should have mentioned this in a blog post sooner, probably as I was planning the trip. But alas. As you may or may not know, I drove my car, and my girlfriend around Europe for nearly two months over summer.

I can honestly say it was the most amazing, daunting, exhausting, exhillerating and fantastic trip I’ve ever had. It had many ups, many downs and sometimes wishes of coming home early! But I did it, and have a lot of photos to show for it!

Using your Raspberry Pi as a DLNA/UPnP media server

Wed, 12 Feb 2014 21:44:00 +0000

Another quick guide to show you how to set up a Raspberry Pi as a DLNA/UPnP media server using an external hard drive as storage.

My home network has long been rather fragmented. Videos, Pictures and Music was spread across any one of 4 or 5 computers on the home network. Some of these computers were laptops, which meant things may or may not be avaliable at any given time. Additionally, any of these computers could be on or off at any one time.

Installing multiple Ghost blogs with Lighttpd and forever

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 10:56:00 +0000

Warning! This guide is out of date/obsolete.

This will be a super simple guide on how to quickly install multiple Ghost blogs on a Linux server, running Lighttpd as an internal proxy. This guide also takes you through running Ghost through forever, which ensures it is always running.

You don’t need the proxying, but if you don’t want to be messing around with port numbers it’s the easiest way to set stuff up.

Mistakes made when choosing online pseudonyms

Sun, 15 Sep 2013 12:29:00 +0000

Online pseudonyms are great. You are in complete control of your identity online, but there are several pitfalls I have faced which can be easily avoided if you’re aware of them before choosing an alias.

Long before I was thinking about my personal brand online, my career, or even entering that big scary world of high-school, I quickly learned through narcissism and self obsessed Googling that a lot of Ben Brooks’ existed in the world. Some are novelists, politicians, property managers, and even Australian cyclists who have had far longer to build up their online presence and identity.

Don't reinvent the scrollbar

Tue, 20 Aug 2013 10:00:00 +0000

We don’t need page numbers on the web, you can scroll your way through a piece of text at the flick of a finger. But how do you know how far through an article you are?

I came across a discussion or two on Hacker News today about making indicators to display your progress while reading an article. A concept that looked a little like this…

Kindles and other E-Book readers have something similar. A horizontal bar along the bottom of the screen which displays how far through a book you are, along with chapter markers.